


not in a shy way

by Stella959



Category: The West Wing
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 19:42:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9673202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stella959/pseuds/Stella959
Summary: They tell Mrs. Landingham.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _[My Way](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Way)_.

It’s not until Dolores Landingham is halfway out the building that she realizes she’s left her purse at her desk. It’s not the first time it’s happened and it certainly won’t be the last, and so she makes her way back towards the Oval Office with just a small ‘humph’ at the inconvenience of it all.

She’s got her purse in her hand and is just about to step away from her desk again when she catches the time out of the corner of her eye, the bold hands on the clock behind Charlie’s desk telling her that it is much later than she had thought. She sighs, sets her purse back down on her desk, and walks to the doorway of the Oval Office.

“Sir?”

The President looks up from his paperwork. “Mrs. Landingham, back so soon? What, they felt so bad swindling a poor old lady into paying the sticker price that they wouldn’t give you the car?”

“No, sir. You see, it’s quarter to seven, but the dealership closed at six. So I’m going to have to wait until tomorrow to pick it up, that’s all.”

“All the better then, more time for you to reconsider the whole thing.”

“Now, sir…” The President waves his hand and she quiets. He stands and straightens the papers on his desk.

“Dolores, do you mind stepping in for just a minute? You can close the door behind you.”

She does as he asked, then says, “You said you wanted to talk to me about something?”

Jed walks around to the front of the desk. He gestures for her to sit before leaning back against the desk and crossing his arms. He’s wearing that sour look he gets when he’s just made a difficult decision that he doesn’t particularly like. It’s a face that’s been making many more appearances than it used to these last few weeks, though it’s not been aimed directly at her until tonight.

“Now Leo wanted to be here, but he’s in the situation room keeping an eye on this thing in Haiti.”

He pauses, as if waiting for her to say something, but after her lack of a response he sighs and continues, “I should have done this a long time ago, and I hope that you’ll forgive me for not having told you sooner.”

Mrs. Landingham doesn’t sit, doesn’t move, just stands there with her coat over her arm and looks him squarely in the eye.

“You might want to sit down for this, Mrs. Landingham.”

“If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather stand, Mr. President.”

The words _if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather you sit_ are on the tip of his tongue, but what with the content of what would follow it, he allows her this choice. It’s been a long time coming, this telling, and sometimes he’s wondered if she shouldn’t have been the first person he told after the kids, after Leo. But by now all the senior staff know, and one or two of the assistants, but better late than never so Jed opens his mouth and he tells her.

She sits.

###

Leo knocks on the door that goes from his office to the President’s, but instead of the President calling him in the door pulls open and the President comes into Leo’s office. He’s grim faced but not quite upset. As he’s closing the door behind him he catches sight of Mrs. Landingham on the far sofa, hands crossed in her lap and her unseeing gaze held somewhere over the seal on the rug.

“How’d she take it?” Leo asks after the door clicks shut. The President lets out a long, slow breath and drops onto the couch.

“If the American people could take it the way she did, Leo, we may be okay.”

The words echo back in his mind, like something he heard Josh or Toby say earlier today. So many people have been told in the last twenty-four hours that he doesn’t have a count of who knows anymore so much as a count of who doesn’t know, within the West Wing at least, and that number has just shrunk by one. He thinks back to his own reaction, and to the reactions of the people he’s told, and says, “If a few more of our own take it that way after tomorrow night, sir, we might be even better.”

The President nods. He knows that Leo came to get him about a development in Haiti, and that he’s needed yet again in the Situation Room. He stands up and returns to the Oval, and Mrs. Landingham is already standing when he enters.

“Mr. President, I understand you’ve got a lot on your plate right now and I’ll leave you to it, but I’ve got just one more question, if you don’t mind.”

“Anything.”

“Do you think you’ll run again?”

It’s a full twenty-four hours before he knows he has to have an answer for that, and while it’s been in the back of his mind ever since they decided to go public with his MS he still doesn’t have a solid response.

“I’ll leave you with this, then, Jed. If you don’t want to run again, I respect that. But if you don’t run because you think it’s going to be too hard or you think you’re going to lose?”

She doesn’t finish the line because she knows that he knows what comes next, the same way she knows that those same words struck a chord with him the first time he heard them all those years ago.

Jed doesn’t say anything, but he sticks his hands in his pockets and looks away, outward through the windows and into the dark night.

“Right then,” she says. She gives him one more studying look before returning the outer office, understanding for the first time in a long while the truly long road ahead of them all.

###

Later that night, a drunk driver swerves into a street light a half a block past the intersection of 18th and Potomac. She’d just barely missed a minivan going through the intersection, but there was no missing the thick steel pole that stopped the car instantly.

The driver had a rapidly blackening eye from the airbag and a fractured wrist, but the other two in the car with her are little more than bruised. Their seat belts did their jobs and the alcohol in their bodies kept them from tensing up on impact, and even the driver will be out of the hospital come morning.

The first responders all agreed it’s nothing short of a miracle that nobody else is hurt.

**Author's Note:**

> me: *has five million other things to do*  
> also me: *rewatches the west wing*
> 
> Thanks for the read, and please review!


End file.
